Britain's new leader, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, in the tried-and-true way of Communist dictators, has begun his first term by initiating a great purge of British dissidents.
British protesters, denounced as "far right thugs," are being put behind bars faster than the prison services can absorb. More than 1,000 people who have been arrested and more than 500 charged, are waiting for their court appearances in police holding cells: prisons have run out of space. As in the most expert dictatorship, even children and grandfathers have been arrested by the police for "rioting". The youngest child arrested and charged is just 11 years old.
Because the prisons, already overflowing, cannot handle the sudden influx of mass-sentenced wrongthinkers, Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood announced that to make room for the dissidents, it will be freeing early roughly 5,500 criminals from prison this month. The released prisoners "will include criminals convicted of violence who have been jailed for less than four years but exclude those serving longer sentences for more serious violence," according to The Telegraph.
The mass arrests and trials are occurring at the same time as "Police are increasingly letting knife and sex offenders escape prosecution if they say sorry," according to an August 26 report by The Telegraph, which continued:
"More than 147,000 people accused of offences including sex crimes, violence and weapons possession were given community resolutions in the year to March instead of being prosecuted. Such resolutions do not result in a criminal record. Police guidance says community resolutions should be restricted to low-level crimes, with offenders required to apologise to the victim, accept 'responsibility' for their crime and offer some form of recompense. But the resolutions, which are issued at the discretion of individual officers, have increased by 40 per cent since 2019 – when 102,574 were recorded – and are now nearly twice as likely as a criminal charge, according to an analysis of Ministry of Justice data."
British wrongthinkers guilty of expressing their anger on the internet or hurling obscenities at police officers are held to a completely different standard, as the following selected list of Britons recently sentenced at record speed shows:
Julie Sweeney, a 53-year-old grandmother and caretaker of her husband from a village in Cheshire posted angry words on the internet after the murder of the three little girls in Southport by Axel Rudakubana, the teenage son of Rwandan migrants. "Don't protect the mosques. Blow the mosques up with the adults in it," she wrote in a local online community group. Calling Sweeney a "keyboard warrior", Judge Steven Everett Branding told her that "even people like you need to go to prison".
In 2022, the same judge, in a case of a 76-year old pedophile who had downloaded child porn, ruled that "It would be unconscionable to send him to prison."
Sweeney's husband described how numerous police had arrived in three police cars just to arrest his wife, who had never before had anything to do with the law and lived a "sheltered and quiet life." Sweeney told the police that she had posted the comment in anger following the murder of the three little girls and had "no intention to put people in fear." She also apologized, telling police her comment had been unacceptable and that she would be deleting her Facebook account. The British justice system had no mercy: She was sentenced to 15 months in prison.
Unlike Sweeney, Rudakubana, charged with the murder of the three girls and attempted murder of ten people, mainly children, will only go on trial in January 2025.
A spokesman for Cheshire police thoughtfully notified the public that the grandmother had been thrown in jail to serve as a stark warning to other wrongthinkers:
"As this case demonstrates, there is nowhere to hide. If you choose to engage in this behaviour, whether in person or online, we will find you and you will be held responsible."
Jordan Parlour, 28, was also sentenced for writing on a Facebook post: "Every man and their dog should be smashing fuck out Britannia Hotel", a hotel in Leeds housing migrants that was reportedly being pelted with stones at the time by protesters. Parlour's post received just six likes with one Facebook user asking "why?" Parlour replied:
"They are over here given a life of Riley off the tax of us hard-working people earn when it could be put to better use... come here with no work visa, no trade to their name and sit and doss and then there's more people being put out homeless each year, they get top band priority on housing and many more other reasons."
Judge Guy Kearl said in his sentencing remarks:
"You were arrested in the early hours of 5th August and interviewed by the police. Your motivation became clear when you informed the police that you had promoted the idea of attacking the Britannia Hotel as a result of anger and frustration at immigration problems in the country. You went on to say that you did not want your money going to immigrants who 'rape our kids and get priority'.
"Although you said that you had no intention of carrying out any act of violence, there can be no doubt that you were inciting others to do so, otherwise, why post the comment? You expressed remorse but by that time it was too late....
"[T]his offence is so serious that an immediate custodial sentence is unavoidable. The sentence that I pass has been reduced by 1/3 to reflect your guilty plea. The sentence is 20 months imprisonment."
In 2021, Judge Guy Kearl ruled that a pedophile, who was found guilty of downloading "hundreds of vile child sex abuse images" on his computer, did not have to serve any time in jail.
Pensioner David Spring, 61, recently retired, was sentenced to 18 months in prison, "as a deterrent to others" for making threatening and hostile gestures towards police. He had called officers "c*nts" and joined in chants of "you're not English any more" and "who the f*** is Allah."
Judge Benedict Kelleher was asked to consider Spring's caring duties for his sick wife. Instead, he told Spring that "severe" sentences were needed to deter others. So the pensioner was sent straight to prison. The judge said:
"At that point you did that [the shouting and swearing at police] you must have been well aware it was a particularly volatile situation and police were doing their best to keep order. Your actions showed a complete contempt for the police at that time... What you were doing could and, it appears, did encourage others to threaten the police and add to the disorder."
Gary Harkness, 51, was handed a 12-month prison sentence even though the judge did not appear to quite think that he had committed any crime. What his "crime" was is still not clear. Apparently, he admitted to being "part of" a disorder, but seems to have done nothing criminal, apart from being extremely drunk, which is not a crime. Handing out his sentence, Judge Linford said:
"Of the people I have thus far sentenced you are the person who provides me with the most difficulty because it cannot be levelled at you that you hit anyone, neither have you thrown anything, neither is it said that you spat at anybody.
"But it is accepted by you that you were a party to this disorder and I have to sentence you on the basis, and you also know that anyone party to it has to receive a custodial sentence."
Harkness, had apparently drunk quite a bit on the day of the "disorder" and "was seen making lewd gestures and swearing during the evening and at another point pushes or is pushed by a police officer." He was sentenced anyway.
William Nelson Morgan, 69, a grandfather, was sentenced to 32 months in prison after he was arrested for refusing to move as police pushed back a crowd of rioters where he was present. The court was shown body-worn-camera footage of Morgan being arrested with him saying: "I'm English, I'm 70, all right – leave me alone!" He can also be seen to shout: "Get off me, I'm fucking 70, you pricks." He was carrying a small wooden truncheon, which the judge called a "serious aggravating factor."
Peter Lynch, 61, a grandfather in Rotherham, a place where children have for decades been experiencing rape, other sexual abuse, and torture at the hands of mainly Muslim grooming gangs while police and the city council looked the other way, shouted at police, "you are protecting people who are killing our kids and raping them" and "scum". Lynch was charged with violent disorder, an offence under section 2 of the Public Order Act 1986 which requires that 3 or more persons are present together, that unlawful violence is used or threatened, and that the conduct of the persons would "cause a person of reasonable firmness present at the scene to fear for his personal safety".
Judge Jeremy Richardson told Lynch:
"You did not yourself attack any police officer, as far as can be detected, but what you did was encourage by your conduct others to behave violently and you were part of this mob... What a disgraceful example you are as a grandfather."
Lynch suffers from diabetes, thyroid issues, angina and has recently had a heart attack, but none of this evidently was of concern to the judge who sentenced him to prison for two years and eight months for the "crime" of disagreeing with the Starmer regime.
Lynch was simply telling the truth: In cities such as Rotherham, Telford, Rochdale, Oxford, Peterborough, Keighley, Newcastle and Birmingham local police and councils knowingly allowed mostly Muslim grooming gangs to rape, abuse, torture and even murder thousands of little children and teenagers for decades because they said that if they stopped the crimes, they might appear "racist". These crimes not only continue to this day, but Starmer's new government is knowingly facilitating more of them. Even before the protests began, Starmer set out to make room in the overcrowded prisons by freeing, among other criminals, members of the grooming gangs. GB News reported in early July
"A vile ringleader of a Rotherham child sex abuse gang will be freed after serving just seven years of a thirteen-year sentence. Pedophile Matloob Hussain was jailed in February 2017 but now he's been referred for release by the Parole Board, meaning he is likely to be back out on the streets in a matter of days."
The early release of rapists, pedophiles and violent criminals is especially concerning because the Starmer government doubtless knows that this policy will lead to a spike in those crimes. The Telegraph reported in July:
"At least one murder, sex assault or crime of violence is committed every two days by convicted criminals under supervision of the probation service after being released from jail, research has revealed. An analysis of Ministry of Justice data shows that 3,540 serious further offences (SFOs) – which include murder, kidnap, rape, arson and other sexual or violent crimes – were carried out by criminals released from between 2010 and 2022 and placed under the supervision of the probation service. They included 762 murders, 220 attempted murders and more than 1,000 serious sexual crimes including rape, sexual assault, and rape of children under 13 since 2010. It equated to one offence every 30 hours over the 12-year period."
Does the Starmer government really have so much contempt for the British? They are not even allowed to protest the rape of their children.
An additional injustice is that the law on "racial incitement" is not applied equally to everyone in Britain. For more than ten months, weekly incitement across the UK in support of the terrorist group Hamas has had no legal consequences whatsoever for those involved. These groups, orchestrated by Hamas-affiliated organizations, wave jihadist and Al Qaeda flags; call for "Jihad!" and for Israel to be cleansed of its Jews "from the river to the sea," celebrate terrorists who murder, rape, mutilate and burn innocent people alive. They are allowed to continue their incitement, even though, in the UK, both Hamas and Al Qaeda are proscribed terrorist organizations and supporting them can carry a prison sentence up to 14 years.
This encumbrance does not appear to be the last liability that Starmer has in store for the British, whom, it seems, he aims to silence completely. Government advisor John Woodcock, to crack down on the protests, actually called for "Covid-style lockdowns":
"New ministers in office will understand that the British public will back them in whatever measures they feel are necessary to get this situation under control. We should cast our minds back to the days of Covid where the public accepted an emergency situation that we prepared to back and lawmakers were prepared to support....
"In Covid the [British public was] able to back measures that were needed in that situation. They would take a similar approach to keep rioters off the streets to see the scale of damage being done to communities."
The government is preparing even more censorship. Home Secretary Yvette Cooper, according to the Guardian, has been vowing "to crack down on promotion of 'hateful beliefs'" to address "gaps in the current system" that "leave the country exposed to hateful or harmful activity that promotes violence or undermines democracy."
The government is reportedly also considering a proposal by the Centre for Countering Digital Hate to grant government regulator Ofcom "emergency powers that would momentarily allow it to demand action taken by online platforms" against unwanted speech or information.
In addition, Speaker of the House of Commons Sir Lindsay Hoyle recently made it clear that he thinks everything with which the government disagrees should be banned on social media. There seems to be no awareness of the essential problem: who chooses what is misinformation? Hoyle said:
"Misinformation is dangerous. Social media is good, but it is also bad when people are using it in a way that could cause a riot, threats, intimidation, actually suggesting that we should attack somebody - you know, it's not acceptable. What we've got to is make sure it's factual, correct, what's up there. If not, I think the government have really got to think long and hard about what they're going to do with social media and what are they going to put through parliament as a bill to act....
It doesn't matter what country you're in, the fact is that misinformation is dangerous. And no misinformation or threat or intimidation should be allowed to be carried out on social media platform. This should be for good, not for bad."
"Ideas are more powerful even than guns. We would not let our enemies have guns, why should we let them have ideas," said Soviet dictator and mass murderer Josef Stalin. Those words appear to have become Starmer's motto, as he ruthlessly purges the British population of those who disagree with him, having the courts hand them all massive prison sentences in overcrowded jails to "deter" anyone who might even think of dissenting in the future. Starmer's methods were once exclusively reserved for dictatorships such as China, Russia and North Korea. Western democracies did not used to sentence people to long prison sentences for speech crimes.
Judging by the silence of Western political and media elites in the face of this Orwellian crackdown in the country that gave the world the magna carta, we would be wise to remember that this chilling reality could soon be ours.
Robert Williams is a researcher based in the United States.
Odo Saunders